


The End is the Beginning is the End

by ravenoftheninerealms



Category: Supernatural
Genre: End!verse, Gen, M/M, Time Travel, happy endings, it's happy, no seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-28
Updated: 2012-08-28
Packaged: 2017-11-13 01:22:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/497859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenoftheninerealms/pseuds/ravenoftheninerealms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there is no past!Dean meeting future!Dean, Cas has an ace up his sleeve (or maybe a bomb), Sam is not-so-mysteriously absent, and a drabble is taken way too seriously.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The End is the Beginning is the End

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize because this is super depressing at the beginning and there’s lots of graphic injuries and angst and almost character death and did I mention angst but I promise it’s got a happy ending I swear to you. See also ‘why I am never ever writing end!verse fic again’. 
> 
> Also, this is my first fic. So please be kind, I haven't written in forever...

"the end is the beginning is the end"

_The sewers belch me up_

_The heavens spit me out_

_From ethers tragic I am born again_

_And now I'm with you now_

_Inside your world of wow_

_To move in desires made of deadly pretends_

  
“So are you really--” The hunter trailed off, uncharacteristic to the way he’d spoken bluntly to the group only an hour prior. But then again, when Dean had built himself walls after their failure, Cas had ripped all of his down.  
  
“Yes, Dean.” Said so carelessly, without thought; second nature by now. Yes, Dean, of course I restocked the vicodin.  Yes, Dean, of course I told Chuck to prepare for the thunderstorm. Yes, Dean, of course I got stitches for my leg. Yes, Dean, of course I’m staying by your side.  
  
“Cas, you know what’s gonna go down in there. I know you know. You know I know that you know. So just--” He was belligerent now, the Machiavellian leader with no title but ‘Winchester’. Now that he thought about it, they did share approximately the same nose.    
  
“No, Dean. I’m not staying here.” He could feel the annoyance coming off their fearless leader in waves-- but underneath was concern and, unsurprisingly, a festering splotch of guilt buried deep within anger. Despite slowly but continuously ‘losing his wings’, the somewhat-angel still had a few residual properties he kept to himself and thus Dean’s emotions still swirled over his physical form. The whorls of feeling grew more agitated with the ongoing silence, the hunter’s brain trying to process a way to keep Cas on base without undermining the previous (and public) announcement that he could accompany the party.  
  
His sigh rumbled across the guns laid out on the table, mixing with a growl and Cas recognized the white flag as Dean’s emotions turned sluggish, murky, and full of weight, like swamp water after a flash flood. The silence stretched on as the somewhat-angel took his place at the right hand of the not-so-righteous man on the worn cot, picked up the nearest gun cloth, and started cleaning.  
  
\---  
  
“You remember the first time you saw me?” He drawled from the passenger seat of the weapons-loaded truck, popping a few pills and putting his feet up on the dashboard.  
  
“Does this look like fucking storytime to you, Cas?” Dean muttered from the vicinity of the wheel, but his emotions only showed tired resignation; the passenger continued on with no regard for the distinct lack of coffee Dean had discovered that morning and the darker-than-normal circles underneath his eyes. Because Cas was flying high in the most human of ways.  
  
“I remember. The sky was rumbly, and turbulent, and it was so hard to fly that I ended up crashing on the roof of that metal shack you were in. Thunder covered it of course, can’t have an angel meet such a prestigious figure without a little fanfare and holy fear thrown in. You know how the upper management gets sometimes, throwing down the disobedient soldiers to get a true glimpse of humanity to restore the snobbiness. But I crashed into that fucking roof so hard, I was so unused to flying on Earth. Because, yaknow, angels don’t fly there. It’s a no-fly zone. Very strict. Like... what was that dumb country? Oh, right. North Korea.” He paused his rambling and gesturing, scratching at his scruff (razors were very rare; if you didn’t know how to use a knife then too bad so sad), “Actually... that’s a rather perfect analogy. Bunch of dicks, restricting a whole people to their brainwashing beliefs, utter worship of something that doesn’t even exist--”  
  
“Cas,” Dean interrupted softly, “stop.”  
  
And they were silent once more, in the beginning of the end.  
  
\---  
  
It was morning when they arrived, a nondescript house in no-man’s-land. Winchester’s troops gathered round, checking ammo clips, blade sharpness, ignoring the elephant in the room. Or in this case, van.  
  
Chuck broke the silence: “Where’s Cas?”  
  
“Asleep,” he said curtly. “Popped one too many pills. He’s drooling on the backseat in la-la land, and I am not giving a gun to some half-high druggie. We might die today but it will not be from friendly fire.” The others carried on-- if Dean was lying, they didn’t care. They trusted their leader to know what to do.  
  
Except Chuck had seen the blood on his jacket cuffs, and redness under his eyes that was a shade too fresh to be coffee deprivation or a hangover. But he didn’t question it, he never did. Winchester did what he did because he had to, and even only with glimpses of what the hunter had been through, Chuck was sure of one: he didn’t want to know.  
  
\---  
  
Cas heard the shots ring out from his seat in the truck. He didn’t flinch-- that would only dislodge his knee from where it was elevated, and dying from blood loss wasn’t exactly the way he wanted to go. That, or move the bullet, and he didn’t want the synovial fluid in the knee to pick it up (the bullet would dissolve in synovial fluid, giving him lead poisoning, which was also on his list of Not Very Nice Ways To Go). But then again, that’s what drugs were for.  
  
That’s when he felt the shockwave.  
  
His shoulder screamed in pain-- the knee that had immobilized him forgotten, numbed by the pills. But that didn’t make sense... and then it hit him like the numbness had this morning. The pain wasn’t his, it was Dean’s, bleeding through the point where Cas’ mark was on him. And all of a sudden everything was sharp again, clear and almost over-vibrant with pain.  
  
He grit his teeth, bound the knee to the stripped stock of a rifle, and opened the truck’s door.  
  
 _dean, i’m coming to you._  
  
\---  
  
 _dean, i’m coming to you._  
  
He was hearing voices now. Wonderful. Apparently his subconscious had a sense of great fucking irony, too-- immobilized and most likely dying from the same injury he had inflicted on the voice’s owner not an hour before, all he was doing now was waiting to die. Unable to say yes to Michael, his brother long dead, he was resigned to sitting on his ass and watching as that bag of dicks waltzed away in his brother’s skin, leaving him there to suffer slow blood loss.  
  
“Look forward to seeing you in a couple days, sweetie,” he had quipped, wiggling his perfectly-trimmed fingernails as the hunter from across the room spat curses and latin at him, and promptly disappeared with a snap of his fingers.    
  
Dean fought the darkness at the edges of his vision, and blacked out.  
  
\---  
  
He came to with a groan that would’ve been a scream, had he the energy. There was weight on his thighs, exaggerating the pain below, and he didn’t have a shirt. Had he taken it off to staunch the blood? He cracked an eye open to assess his diminishing lifespan, instead seeing crazed blue eyes surrounded by a face that was the kind of pale that signified too much blood loss.  
  
 _dean i need you to pay attention--_  
  
Dean’s brain, hazed with pain and confusion, overloaded. Cas’ hand was on his marked shoulder, his voice in his brain, his thighs straddling Dean with utter disregard to the pain in his knee, their blood mixing together on the wood floor and holy shit he could feel that too, the tinge of the pills Cas had taken, fading fast--  
  
 _dean i mean it. calm down. it’s okay. i’m here._  
  
He felt moisture on his cheeks as his breathing slowed raggedly.  
  
 _i’m not leaving._  
  
Dean’s walls fell. All the carefully-built floodgates, bunkers of emotions repressed, strict guidelines of what to say and what to do, didn’t matter anymore. The world was ending, and they were ending with it.  
  
\---  
  
Cas let Dean breathe shakily-- he knew the hunter didn’t have any tears left to give for them, could feel the _i’m sorry cas we should’ve this shouldn’t have we should’ve been two normal dudes who met at some supermarket and used cheesy conversation starters and you’d write your number on my hand and we’d grow old and drink too much coffee and oh god i wish but this is okay the world is ending isn’t it i’m so sorry_ , a steady driving litany from that festering sore of guilt he’d kept hidden and something close to love lurking underneath it, and the somewhat-angel held the hunter as Dean’s hands were in his hair and around his back, his forehead tucked into the crook of his neck where Cas could feel every shuddering breath he took.  
  
 _ssh its okay, ssshhh. dean i need you to listen carefully. pinpoint the one moment where you wish you had done right, where you might not have been able to have your supermarket and your cheesy first date awkwardness but where you wish--_  
  
And immediately Cas felt the memory shining bright in the hunter’s mind, and he knew that he had to do this one thing. Even though changing the past wouldn’t alter their future of this house as their grave, maybe their past selves could find a way, together, to not end up here as well.  
  
\---  
  
Dean felt the idea coalescing in Cas’ brain, the knowledge that it would kill both of them. But they were already dead-- at least this way, he would make a difference. They could be redeemed, in the end.  
  
He moved his hand to mirror the angel’s grip on his own, and gave all he had. Those last shards of will, burning grace and conviction, Cas taking them, molding them, reaching back through the years.  
  
This was the end, but it was also the beginning.  
  
\---  
  
Dean was bleeding, the angel hadn’t held back with his punches and his fists as unyielding as the brick wall behind him. The angel snarled in front of him, angry with good reason, saying that he had fought, and rebelled, and for what? And the look in Cas’ eyes said he would never be forgiven, and he knew it.  
  
 _he will always forgive you_ , a voice whispered in the back of his mind. _always_. It faded, and with it the memories that had come with it: a desolate landscape, a hopeless future living off scraps, and a wasted bond that had never been used. Dean knew, and as the fury of the angel before him slammed him once more into the wall, demanding answers, Dean choked out words around the blood, tears in his eyes at how much his future self had seen, and done, and wasted.  
  
“Forgive me.”  
  
The angel froze. And the hunter took the opportunity to kiss him; sweat, tears, and blood included.  
  
Cas, Dean discovered, tasted like redemption.

**Author's Note:**

> So there you have it, folks! Ugh, feels like I haven't written in ages.
> 
> I welcome all typographic corrections, so please drop me a note if you see one.


End file.
